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what was fast becoming the most real thing in his existence.
In December Mr. Wace's work in connection with a forthcoming examination
became heavy, the sittings were reluctantly suspended for a week, and
for ten or eleven days--he is not quite sure which--he saw nothing of
Cave. He then grew anxious to resume these investigations, and, the
stress of his seasonal labours being abated, he went down to Seven
Dials. At the corner he noticed a shutter before a bird fancier's
window, and then another at a cobbler's. Mr. Cave's shop was closed.
He rapped and the door was opened by the step-son in black. He at once
called Mrs. Cave, who was, Mr. Wace could not but observe, in cheap but
ample widow's weeds of the most imposing pattern. Without any very
great surprise Mr. Wace learnt that Cave was dead and already buried.
She was in tears, and her voice was a little thick. She had just
returned from Highgate. Her mind seemed occupied with her own prospects
and the honourable details of the obsequies, but Mr. Wace was at last
able to learn the particulars of Cave's death. He had been found dead in
his shop in the early morning, the day after his last visit to Mr. Wace,
and the crystal had been clasped in his stone-cold hands. His face was
smiling, said Mrs. Cave, and the velvet cloth from the minerals lay on
the floor at his feet. He must have been dead five or six hours when he
was found.
This came as a great shock to Wace, and he began to reproach himself
bitterly for having neglected the plain symptoms of the old man's
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